Who is Larry Beck?

Beck is the fourth and, as of this writing, most recent husband of Sylvia Browne, after Joe Tshcirhart (the marriage was annulled), Gary Dufresne (interviewed here) and Kensil Dalzell Brown (discussed here).

A part of Browne's Nirvana Foundation For Psychic Research (now known as The Society of Novus Spiritus) from within months of it having been founded in 1974, Beck rose from being a member of the staff to being Browne's business manager, and, in 1994, her husband.

Beck is also listed as an editor on the three books (God, Creation and Tools for Life, Soul's Perfection and The Nature of Good and Evil) which make up the off-the-shelf version of Browne's Journey of the Soul series, a distillation of the eight-volume series of the same name which is used by Browne's Church of Novus Spiritus as their study guide.

I have spoken and corresponded with many current and former ministers and members within Novus Spiritus. Their opinions on Beck have been fairly consistent, and may be best summarized by one who said the following:

He was intelligent, talkative, opinionated and self-centered. I suspect that he couldn't remain with SB because he was too much in her shadow and she reminded him of it in public every chance she got.

Others described Beck as a "manipulator," and many gave him much of the credit - as Browne's business manager - for her rise to media prominence.

The Emails

Hari Dev Singh (Larry Beck)

One thing which came up time and again in my conversations and correspondences with these people was the claim that Beck had signed some "non-disclosure agreement" with Browne as part of their divorce settlement, agreeing not to say anything publicly about Browne. Nobody had any proof of such an agreement, but I was told time and again that it was "common knowledge" around Browne's office.

Given all that I had heard about Beck, I decided it was time to contact him on the off-chance that he would be interested in helping me with the goals of this site. If the rumors of a non-disclosure agreement were true, I doubted I would get any cooperation from him, but I felt he was a potential source of information that I could not afford to ignore.

One of the ex-Novus Spiritus members found Beck's contact information for me. After divorcing Browne, Beck moved to Chicago, where he has a management company catering to "spiritual teachers and practitioners", and where, under the name "Hari Dev Singh", he is helping his new wife with her Yoga studio.

My name is Robert Lancaster, and as you might guess from my email address, I am the webmaster and creator of a site which is highly critical of your ex-wife, Sylvia Browne.

I am writing to ask you if you would be willing to provide me with information which would be of use to me in my goal of exposing Browne for the fraud I believe her to be.

It could either be by supplying me with quotes which I can use on the site, or, if you would rather be anonymous, you could simply tell me about things I should investigate, and I would do so without ever naming you as a source. If that is the way you would like to go, I can promise you anonymity. Of course, you do not know me, and so do not know if my promise is worth anything.

If you haven't already, I would ask you to visit my web site (www.StopSylviaBrowne.com) and read some of the articles there. I have tried to use as fair and straightforward an approach as I can, but I make no pretense of being unbiased. I firmly believe Browne to be a fraud who takes advantage of vulnerable people during their most desperate hours (such as the families of missing persons).

If you read my site you will hopefully notice that I never quote an email I receive unless I first obtain explicit permission from the author to do so. So, if you choose to reply to this, you will not be quoted without your approval.

If you are not interested in any of this, that is fine. I would imagine that getting drawn back into Browne's nonsense is something a person might want to avoid. But I am hoping that you might be willing to share with me some things which will help me to stop her from hurting more innocent people.

Either way, thanks for taking the time to read this, and best of luck with your new life and new wife.

Robert S. LancasterWebmaster,www.StopSylviaBrowne.com

I received a reply from Beck three days later, on June 25th. In it, he did not give me permission to quote him, so I will have to paraphrase it here.

It was polite, direct and brief. Other than my name in the salutation, and his name in the signature, there was only one brief sentence, in which he said that he could not make any comments about Sylvia Browne.

He did not say that he would not comment on Browne, nor that he would prefer not to. He didn't even tell me to mind my own business, which he would have had every right to do.

He specifically said that he could not comment on Sylvia Browne.

Given all the talk about a non-disclosure agreement, I found that phrasing to be very interesting.

Prediction About Beck

In the afterward to Browne's book Adventures of a Psychic, she writes briefly of her breakup with Dal Brown, and her subsequent marriage to Beck, including a reading she claims to have given to Beck years earlier, in which she predicted their marriage (pp. 245-246, paperback edition):

As a funny aside, people always ask Larry if I knew that someday we would marry (which we did on September 11, 1994). At his first reading in 1973, I did tell him of his future wife, and he still has the audiotape of that session.

[...]

When telling Larry about his (final) wife, I said it would be a woman older than he, with two boys, dark red hair, and long nails, and it would happen later in his life. I even commented that, for some unknown reason, I could not see her face. So even if I were psychic about myself, I wouldn't know it! (And now you all know the true color of my hair).

Beck left Browne and married Susan Kezios, a woman whom he had met on one of the "Sylvia Browne Cruises" to Egypt. As mentioned above, Beck and Kezios now own and run two businesses in Chicago: Kundalini Yoga in the Loop (a yoga school), and Delphi Management LLC, which "provides marketing, publicity and business management to spiritual teachers and practitioners in various esoteric arts; such as Yoga, Ayurveda, Hypnosis, Massage, Alternative Doctors, Holistic Healers, Astrology, Nutrition, and Personal Trainers."

So, her prediction about being "his (final) wife" was inaccurate, unless they remarry at some future date. And, given the fact that Browne now routinely refers to Beck as "the devil" during her lectures, this does not seem likely.

Analysis

Beck's statement that he "could not" comment on Browne seems to strongly hint at some sort of an arrangement between them, whether it is a non-disclosure agreement, or some clause in their divorce which prevents him from being forthcoming.

It is also conceivable that, were Beck to come forward with information about Browne, the information would not cast him in a good light either.

I can only hope that if there is such an agreement, that there is an expiration date upon it, after which we will get to hear some "behind-the-scenes" stories of Browne and her operation.